Tron:  Reprogrammed
by Moonhawk64
Summary: Tron and the Grid are in desperate need of reprogramming, angry programs find three Users on the Grid, & the Grid holds a surprise for everyone. Rated T for story themes & language
1. Chapter 1

A/N: I saw the original Tron in the theater in 1982 (yeah, I'm that old), and was blown away by it. It was, at the time, absolutely groundbreaking, and I was very disappointed that it didn't do very well at the time. Still, it is still one of my all-time favorite movies (and led to my becoming something of a Bruce Boxleitner fan [yes, I think he's still damn hot]), so when the sequel came out, I naturally went and saw it the first day, in 3D (I didn't discover the Flynn Lives movement until afterwards and am totally bummed about it even though I'm not into computer games). Therefore, even though I have other stories I should be working on, this one just wouldn't leave me alone, and I just had to write it.

Also, I'm somewhat computer literate but I'm no programmer, so, while I tried to make this as true to the way I believe programs would think, talk, and act as I could, I know that still leaves much to be desired. I have no objection to re-editing this story if someone has suggestions I like about improving that part of it, though.

The Standard Disclaimer: I own nothing, except the movies on DVD. And the books. And a computer with an internet connection so I can go to the Flynn Lives site and at least see the stuff that's still up.

Spoilers: Everything except the computer games.

Timeline: This story takes place about two weeks after the end of Tron: Legacy.

* * *

><p>Tron: Reprogrammed<p>

By Moonhawk64

Chapter One

Sam Flynn approached Alan Bradley's office with some trepidation. It wasn't that the twenty-seven year old head of Encom didn't trust the older man with the information he was about to impart, it was that he knew convincing the straight-laced CEO was going to be tough at best. After all, if his father had kept knowledge of what had happened to him the night he was zapped into Encom's computer grid - and everything that happened afterward - from his best friend, then it was probably because he knew Alan would never believe it. Unfortunately, Sam didn't feel he had a choice now - Tron was not just acting erratically, now, he was apparently actually glitched - and his programming, originally Alan's, was complicated enough that Sam knew his meager programming skills were definitely not up to the task of fixing the security program. Sam chuckled ironically. Alan had been right about that, too. His surrogate father had told Sam when he dropped out of college that that act of rebellion against his missing father would be something he'd regret. Now, he not only regretted it, it had actually come back to bite him on the ass.

Sam knew the best way to convince Alan of the truth was to take him into the grid. And that was just what he was prepared to do. If nothing else, Sam felt that after all the years of faithfulness, his dad's best friend deserved to know the whole truth. Besides, while Sam often engaged in extreme sports - such as base jumping - he wasn't stupid enough to do things like that without some form of insurance. In this case, Sam had no intention of spending twenty years trapped in the Grid because no one knew he was there. Had his dad trusted someone with that knowledge - besides a child who thought those stories were only stories - then Kevin Flynn wouldn't have been trapped in the Grid for twenty years, either. So much pain that could have been avoided...so Sam had decided to correct that mistake now.

Sam walked right past Alan's PA, a beautiful but efficient brunette that Sam had tried to get a date with once, but who Sam knew Alan probably had never even noticed; Alan was too devoted to Lora, his wife of twenty-five years. The brunette was on the phone, but nonetheless tried to stop Sam. Sam, still worried about Tron's latest incident, ignored her, and walked right on through, pushing open Alan's door and breezing in without even knocking.

"Alan, I need-" But Sam stopped abruptly - both physically and verbally - when he saw that Alan had a visitor. The curly-haired older man was familiar to Sam, but the younger man didn't know Roy very well. He knew Roy Kleinberg had been a friend of his dad's, although, there had been some sort of falling out some time after his mom's death, then Roy had been a victim of the mass firings at Encom about a year after his dad's disappearance. He hadn't seen Roy in years, until Alan brought him back to Encom. Now, both men looked at Sam, slightly annoyed. Sam flushed in embarrassment, but barreled on ahead, anyway.

"Um, sorry to bust in like this, but I need help, and I think Alan is my best hope."

"Yeah," Roy said, "Because, you know, he fought in the Clone Wars. Although that was so long ago..." Alan quelled the other man with a look, but grinned nonetheless. Sam chuckled too, but sarcastically.

"Uh, yeah." Sam said, an idea suddenly coming to him. He'd never known the reason for Kevin Flynn's falling out with Roy, but he did know it had nothing to do with the blond man's programming skills, which had been top-notch. And, while he had no idea whether Roy - or even Alan, come to that - had kept up with current programming, what he needed was skill in the older stuff, anyway. "Listen, Roy, I could really use both your help with a bit of an emergency I've got. I really need you both to come with me."

Alan raised both eyebrows. "Please?" He said. Sam, exasperated, gave in, not wanting to take the time to argue.

"Yeah, please." Alan glanced at Roy, who shrugged. They were supposed to be collaborating on the new firewall/anti-virus software they wanted to present, but it was almost finished so, instead, they'd just been shooting the breeze, so, why not?

"Hmm, ok." Alan said as he stood from his chair and moved out from behind his desk. Roy fell in a half-step behind him as they exited Alan's office. "What's your emergency? Gaming software development get into it with Military Simulations again?" He turned to Roy. "You remember what happened the last time...?" Roy rolled his eyes.

"Let's just hope they don't-" Roy started, but Sam interrupted.

"Um, no, nothing like that. It's...well, I really think showing you is the only way you'll understand." Alan shrugged.

"Ok, Sam." Alan said tolerantly, willing to bide his time. Roy said nothing, simply shrugged and followed along. They continued following Sam down into the first sub-basement level, down a green-painted concrete corridor to an unassuming door with no markings. Beside the door, leaning against the wall, was a tall woman with strong features and a child-like mein. Her raven hair was cut in an assymetrical bob, and she wore a black tank top and black jeans. She grinned upon seeing them.

"Hey, Sam." She greeted, then turned to Alan and Roy, nodding respectfully to each. "User Alan, User Roy."

"Hello, Quorra." Alan returned her greeting politely, while Roy simply nodded acknowledgment, then turned back to Sam.

"Um, Sam? What are we doing here? I thought you needed to show us something." Roy asked, confused.

"Yeah, well, under the circumstances, I figured hiding it here was for the best." Sam answered cryptically, pulling a leather cord out from under his shirt. On the end of it was a key, which Sam fitted into the door's lock. He opened the door and entered, gesturing for the two older men to follow. Quorra entered last. Inside, the room, about ten feet by ten feet, contained, on the wall opposite the door, a desk with a laptop computer on it, and a chair. Another chair was beside it, and it was to this second chair that Quorra moved to sit. In the corner beside the door, and pointed at the desk chair, was a device Alan recognized, although it had been years since he'd seen it last.

"Is that..is that the Shiva laser?" Alan asked incredulously. "My god, I haven't seen this in...Sam what is this doing here? What's going on? I think we've been patient long enough. Talk to me, Sam."

"Shiva, you called it?" Sam said. "Um, yeah, well, I didn't know it had a name, but it's the only way to get there."

"Get there?" Alan said, puzzled. "Get where?"

"Inside the Grid."


	2. Chapter 2

A bright flash of light, an unpleasant sensation as if his entire body was being pulled apart, a disorienting feeling as if he were falling forever, and then the equally unpleasant sensation of being squeezed. Alan opened his eyes - and almost immediately noticed that the room had changed. Alan spun around, startled. Not only was he now alone in the room, but the desk was empty, there was no second chair, and no Shiva laser. Instead, in the corner where the laser had stood, was a plastic-looking object slightly shorter than Alan, about a foot and a half wide, and about six inches in depth with a vertical hole in the top quarter. Inside the hole, suspended vertically and slightly smaller than the hole it hung in, was a black plastic-looking disk resembling what Alan thought to be an Indian Chakram, a round, thin, donut-shaped weapon with the outer edge sharpened. They were thrown through the air like a frisbee, and were quite deadly in the right hands. Lora had been a fan of the TV show _Xena: Warrior Princess_, and curious about the weapon, she'd looked it up.

_'Strange place for a sculpture. Or a weapons display.'_ Alan thought as he approached the object, while being careful not to touch it. Suddenly, another bright flash of light came from behind him, and Alan whirled to see Roy, overlaid with scan lines, fade near-instantly into existence right where Alan had been standing just a moment before. Alan's jaw dropped. Roy looked around wildly and spotted Alan.

"What was that?" Roy gasped. Alan closed his mouth.

"I-I'm not sure." Alan said, shaking his head in amazement. "But you just...materialized out of nowhere."

"I what?" Roy blurted.

"Um, you were overlaid with scan lines. I guess the digital teleportation process works after all." Alan told him. "But, I think you'd better move, because Sam should be coming in next."

"Uh, right." Roy, still processing Alan's extraordinary theory, distractedly moved to stand in the corner opposite Alan, on the other side of the door. Sure enough, a moment later, Roy was able to witness what Alan had seen - Sam fading in, overlaid with scan lines. Alan exhaled loudly and shook his head. Roy gaped, much as Alan had when he'd seen Roy materialize.

Sam grinned at the two flabbergasted men.

"Welcome to the Grid, Users!"

"The Grid?" Alan demanded to know.

"You, my fine furry friends, are now inside the computer. Everything you will see and everyone you will meet here is a program."

"You're kidding, right?" Roy said suspiciously. "This is another of your pranks, right?" Sam sobered, trying to impress the two older men with his seriousness.

"No joke, guys." He told them. "The laser digitized us and transferred us into the laptop computer that was sitting on the desk. The programs running on that system were originally on a big 'ole server in a hidden office in Dad's arcade." Sam spread his arms, a gesture encompassing everything around them. "This is where he'd go at night. This is where he got trapped when he disappeared." Sam dropped his arms, once again seeing in his mind's eye the explosion resulting from his Dad reintegrating with Clu . "This is where Dad sacrificed himself to save me and Quorra."

"He's really dead, then?" Alan whispered. Sam nodded. Roy made a small sound of loss, and Alan reached out to place a hand on his shoulder. Roy turned to Alan, tears in his eyes, his head falling on Alan's arm. Alan's eyes filled, too, and Sam looked away as both men let the tears fall for a moment, grieving their loss.

After a few moments, Sam moved quietly to the sculpture/weapon display, and took the disk out of it's holder. Alan noted the movement, and took a deep breath to bring himself under control - oh, he'd do much more grieving later, but Alan figured that wasn't why they were here. After all, Sam had mentioned something about an emergency. Roy followed suit, swiping at his tears with the sleeve of his shirt. Alan gestured with his chin at the disk in Sam's hands.

"That's a chakram, right?" Sam looked puzzled.

"A what?"

"A chakram. An ancient Indian weapon with a sharp outer edge. You threw it like a frisbee or a boomerang, although it didn't come back."

"Uh, well, actually, they _do_ use these that way, here." Sam answered, surprised that there was an actual historical precedent for it. "But it's original use is as an identity disk. Everything you do or learn is imprinted on the disk. You need to wear these at all times, or the security programs here will think you're a rogue program and arrest your ass." He gestured for Alan to turn around, putting his back to Sam. "It connects to your back, because, your digital body is like a program here. Although, since we're Users, we get extra abilities, and our disks are real valuable because they let us - or anybody else who has them - get back into the Outer World. So, whatever you do, don't lose 'em!" Sam finished as he placed the disk to Alan's back and twisted it to start the mirroring process. Alan suddenly felt an electrical tingling sensation crawl through his brain, and he suddenly saw his entire life flash before him. He gasped. Sam nodded. "Ok, your disk now has your whole life and genetic code on it." Alan reached awkwardly over his shoulder - he wasn't as limber as he used to be - grabbed his disk carefully and gave it a tug. It came off painlessly, and Alan examined it carefully. He looked up as Sam moved back to the tall object - disk caddy? - and touched a spot just below the hole. Within seconds, another disk had materialized, hanging suspended in the hole. Sam removed it, and moved towards Roy. Roy eyed the disk suspiciously.

"Do I really want my whole life and genetic code stored on a disk that just anybody can get ahold of? What's the encryption like on that thing, anyway? Is it password protected?" Sam gaped at him, startled. He'd never even thought of that before. Neither, apparently, had his Dad.

"Uh, well, no, actually. At least, I don't think so. I mean, Dad built the whole Grid, so he had to have access to all the codes from all the programs, and Clu - the sysadmin program that got corrupted and trapped Dad here - had to, too."

"Ok, so how do you access the information on here?" Alan asked.

"Uh, touch here," Sam pointed to a strip along the inner edge. "And just kinda visualize lines of code in your head. Your own User nature will do the rest." Frowning, Alan did as Sam indicated, and the empty space inside the hole of the disk suddenly became the platform for a holographic projection of the information stored on it. Sam and Roy both watched closely as Alan gently touched the coding of the outermost layer of information. Suddenly, the coding vanished, to be replaced by a log-in screen. Alan touched the "username" field, and the name "Alan_1" appeared. He then touched the "password" field, and twelve dots appeared. He touched the "confirm password" field, and twelve more dots appeared. Suddenly, the hologram disappeared completely, and Alan, grinning, looked up.

"And now it's password protected." He said, awkwardly replacing the disk on his back. Sam laughed.

"Cool beans!" He said, admiringly. He gestured for Roy to turn around so Sam could connect his disk. Roy did so reluctantly, and, while Roy's disk was synching up with him, Sam grabbed his own disk off his back, and duplicated Alan's steps for password-protecting it. As soon as his disk was done synching up, Roy did the same.

Alan suddenly looked around. He'd suddenly noticed they were missing someone.

"Quorra's not coming?"

"Oh, uh, no." Sam told him. "She's our insurance policy. See, the return portal shuts down after awhile to save energy, and to make sure no programs get out, it was made so it can only be activated from the outside. Quorra's out there to make sure we can get back out again." Roy, finished password-protecting his disk, said,

"And that's why Kevin couldn't get back out." Sam nodded.

"That's not gonna happen to us." The younger man said. "Which is the other reason why I wanted other people to know about this place. Extra, back-up insurance." Alan looked angry, opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it, and simply sighed in resignation.

"I was going to lament Kevin's keeping this to himself and resulting in his being trapped here, but I know it wouldn't do any good now. He's not here to hear it. Besides, I probably wouldn't have believed him anyway. Even now, this is just so...I'm still not sure I believe all this, and I'm standing here. We're really programs inside a computer? Because, I gotta tell you, despite the differences to this room, it looks pretty much the same."

"Ok, then, come on. Time to see the Grid." Sam grinned, and led them out of the room and down a glossy gray corridor to a stairway leading up. As they climbed the stairs, Sam began to fill in some of the details of his first, accidental venture into the Grid.


	3. Chapter 3

Eventually, the three men emerged onto a sidewalk limned with light.

"So that's what Dad was talking about the night he came to your...house..." Sam, finishing his tale, realized Roy and Alan were no longer listening or following him. He looked back at them. Roy and Alan had stopped on the sidewalk, gawking like tourists, which, really, they were. Roy craned his neck, looking up at the building they'd emerged from. It was an unassuming, glossy black square sitting in the middle of a block of buildings that looked abandoned. However, all the buildings had strips of light in blue or white embedded in them and running up the corners or sides and around the roof lines. Roy touched one of the light strips and found it gave off no heat. _'Must be LED's.'_ He thought, and grinned.

"Wow!" He exclaimed. "This is so cool!"

"Ram?" Alan's voice said, equal parts incredulity and hope. Roy turned to Alan.

"What?" He asked, but Alan was looking around, startled.

"I didn't say anything." Alan replied.

"No," Sam broke in. "He did." And gestured towards a figure approaching them from across the street.

"Who is that...?" Roy trailed off as the figure got close enough to see his face. Roy's jaw dropped as he stared at the other man, then at Alan, then back at the other man. _'He looks almost exactly like Alan did twenty years ago!'_ Well, except for the terrible, black scar with pixellated edges that ran from the outer edge of his right eyebrow up his forehead in a curve to disappear into his hairline.

Sam grinned at the thunderstruck look on the older Users' faces.

"Alan, Roy, I'd like you to meet Tron. Tron, this is Roy Kleinberg, and this is, well, you know him as Alan One". But Sam's grin faded as Tron's expression, initially one of curiosity, then joy, suddenly crumbled into fear and shame. The program dropped to his knees in front of Alan, and hung his head.

"Alan One! I'm so sorry! I failed you!" Alan glanced at Sam, remembering the little the younger man had told him of Clu's enforcer, Rinzler.

"Tron, you didn't fail me." Alan told him, but Tron's guilt was too great for such words to do any good.

"I did, Alan One. You don't know the things I did. I tried, I fought him so hard, for so long. But it wasn't enough, he was too strong. He...he violated my code! Made me do things, made me de-rezz...Y-Yori..." The program's voice broke, and he cringed further, in ultimate shame. Alan frowned in dismay. The things Tron said, the way he said them, sounded rather like...

"Rape." Roy said quietly. "What he's describing sounds like a program's version of rape and torture and brainwashing."

"Oh, god." Alan breathed, horrified.

"Now you know why I'm so worried about him." Sam told Alan grimly. "Nothing I say is enough, so I thought that...maybe, if you tried...you might be able to help."

"I'm not sure, Sam. I've never dealt with anything like this before." Alan told him, at a loss.

"Well," Roy said, "The police direct rape victims to counseling, usually others who've been in the same situation, but that's not going to help here..." Sam and Alan both frowned at Roy. It was Alan who dared to ask,

"Um, Roy, how do you know?" Roy sighed. He'd been hoping they wouldn't ask, but he'd also suspected that he couldn't keep his secret forever. In fact, he'd been surprised he'd managed to keep it from Alan this long. Instead of answering, however, he gestured to the program still grovelling at Alan's feet. Alan gave Roy a look that said _'Ok...for now.'_ He went to one knee in front of Tron, and touched the program's shoulder to get his attention. Tron straightened a bit, but still would not meet Alan's eyes.

"Tron, I want you to listen to me. From what I know of Clu, he had sysadmin privileges, right?" Tron hesitated, then nodded. "Which means, he was almost as powerful as a User, right?" Again, the reluctant nod. "Then you tell me how a program is gonna resist someone who's almost as powerful as a User?" There was a pause, and Alan thought he had him. But then Tron quietly said,

"I resisted the MCP. I fought in his games until Flynn broke us out. I never gave in to him." And, once more, the program's voice broke. Alan sighed in frustration. He thought back on the stories he remembered hearing Kevin tell Sam as a child. The stories of Kevin going into the grid and fighting the MCP alongside Tron and...Ram... It suddenly all hit Alan like a ton of bricks. He heard Roy's voice in his head again, _'Why do you think Flynn gave you the cool nickname?'_ Real, it was all real! Tron and the MCP and Yori and Clu and...all of it was REAL! Alan glanced at Roy and saw him reaching the same revelation. But he also knew he didn't have time to discuss it now. However, this did put everything in perspective, and suddenly, Alan had an idea. He turned back to Tron, trying to remember the details of Kevin's stories.

"Tron, the MCP never came up against you directly. He was too arrogant, seeing you as nothing but a minor nuisance. He used the games to try to break you, but the MCP never did what Clu did. He didn't use torture and he never manipulated your code. He was powerful, but not as powerful as Clu. And you had help with the MCP. You weren't alone. Do you understand?" Tron looked at Alan, surprised.

"When I went up against the MCP, I had Flynn's help. And yours." Alan nodded.

"That's why I'm here. I'm sorry I wasn't there to help you defeat Clu. You never would have had to go through what you went through if I'd known what was going on. I'm so sorry. But I can help you now." Tron looked stunned. _'Alan One is apologizing to me? He's going to help me?'_ He bowed his head again.

"I'm not worthy of such consideration from you, Alan One!" But Alan knew he had him now. Knew he could help, although it would not be easy. Now, however, he knew the first step to take. Alan took Tron by the upper arms and urged him to his feet.

"You are the best program I ever wrote." Alan assured the program. "You'll always be worthy of my consideration. Now, the first thing I need to do is cleanse your code of Clu's corruption." Alan used the words 'cleanse' and 'corruption' deliberately, evoking something spiritual designed to rid Tron of taint than a merely efficient 'correction' would. "Is there someplace private we can go?" Tron closed his eyes, sighing in relief, but then sobered. He processed options for a nanosecond, then started walking down the street, gesturing for the others to follow. Around the corner, where the Users couldn't have seen, were two Lightrunners.

"I have a place I use for downtime." Tron explained as they approached the vehicles, Alan and Roy staring in stunned admiration. Tron turned to Sam. "It's in the same building that the End of Line Club used to be in." Sam nodded, remembering the elite club and it's flamboyant manager. Then he frowned.

"Wait, used to be? The damage from the fight was that bad?" But Tron shook his head.

"Not from the fight, although the place was glitched enough that Zuse took it offline. No, actually, Clu blew it up." Sam blinked in surprise.

"Whoa. That guy had some serious anger issues."


	4. Chapter 4

They looked at the building in amazement. The soaring tower was of an art deco design that looked vaguely like a stalagmite thrusting up from the ground. The top, however, ended too abruptly - obviously, that was where the End of Line Club had been. Curious as to how much damage had been done to the top of the tower, Sam touched the top of the light-bar in the back of the elevator, sending them all the way up.

The elevator rattled and scraped to a stop - apparently the shaft had been warped - and they stepped out to a scene of devastation. And a lone program, standing just outside the elevator, which was the only place _to_ stand. That was about all of the floor that was left, along with jagged remnants of wall, none taller than Alan.

The program turned at the sounds behind him, and Sam recognized the bartender, whose name he hadn't caught. The program had a data pad in his hands, with the glow of something on the screen, although Sam couldn't see it clearly from where he stood. Sam led the way out of the elevator to stand beside the bartender.

The bartender nodded coldly at him.

"User Flynn." He said, a bare acknowledgment of the other man's presence. Alan frowned, puzzled at the program's attitude. He glanced at Tron for explanation. The security program sighed.

"Kevin Flynn...didn't spend much time here in the cycles before Clu took over. We were having major problems here with power consumption and population, but Kevin...had worries in the outer world, and...left us to our own devices too long. It's why Clu staged his coup."

"Which is a nice way of saying Dad neglected this place while grieving for Mom in the bottom of a bottle, so Clu took things into his own hands in a last ditch effort to save the grid." Sam translated grimly. "Which is why Dad never really blamed Clu for taking action, only for what the actions were. It's also why so many programs followed Clu willingly, because they'd given up on Dad." An awkward silence ensued, suddenly broken when Roy squeezed between Alan and Sam, and reached toward the bartender's data pad.

"May I?" He asked. The program appraised him for a moment, apparently saw something he agreed with - or, at least, nothing he disagreed with - and handed over the glowing tablet. Roy studied it. On the screen were the detailed schematics for an oval, art deco club with shapes that flowed organically from the elevator to a curved bar in the back of the club, and up the wall, which contained different sized niches and shelves, presumably for bottles of...whatever programs might drink. As he studied it, he could see Jordan Canas's hand in the design; Kevin was creative, but he had not trained as an architect. In fact, much of the city was probably designed by Jordan, he figured, although Roy had no idea whether or not she knew what the designs were to be used for. As he continued to study the schematics, Roy's programming training and experience kicked in, and he began to mentally write the code that would create the club. Absently, he asked no one in particular, "How exactly does a User write code from this side of the screen, anyway?" Sam frowned.

"Well, I didn't see much, but Dad just kind of...touched stuff. The floor, the walls. And stuff just...manifested." Sam said awkwardly. It was Tron that elaborated.

"User Flynn would touch the environment, connecting to it, and...well, he described it as "springing forth as Athena from the forehead of Zeus". Whatever that means. He said he just visualized the lines of code and the code took shape as he willed it." Roy raised a skeptical eyebrow, but decided,

"What the heck, I'll give it a try." And stepped to one side, placed one hand on the nearest remains of the wall, closed his eyes, and visualized the code he'd already started writing in his head. Line by line, the mental code scrolled through his mind, carefully checked for errors before he went on to the next line. He didn't think he'd get a second chance at this; any bugs might cause the whole place to come down around their heads, and that would be _bad_. Roy had no idea how long he stood there, but the pleased noises the others were making told Roy that what he was doing was apparently working. Finally, exhausted by his efforts, Roy created the last line of code, leaned tiredly against the wall, and opened his eyes.

Pleased, he surveyed his work. Yes, this was what he'd intended. It was the design on the data pad, yes, but with a few personal touches that Roy couldn't resist adding; after all, every artist signed his work, and computer programmers were no different. _'Besides,'_ Roy thought with sad irony, _'Kevin isn't here to object to the changes anymore.'_

Sam recognized the club as he'd seen it before, but he soon noticed the differences. The different sections of floor were different colors; the main section in the middle was black as before, but the side sections were now lit blue or green or red from underneath. The base of the bar cycled from blue to green to yellow to red to purple and back to blue. Lights now surrounded the window of the DJ's booth and pulsed regularly in a pattern that made it look like they were moving around the window, and, when Sam looked up, the ceiling showed not the cloudy, but otherwise empty sky of the grid, but a projected sky full of stars and moon. The bartender nodded approvingly.

"Good job, User." He said, grudging admiration in his voice. Roy smiled happily, and Tron was once more painfully reminded of Ram - and how much he missed his old friend. Which reminded him... "Alan One, my quarters are four floors down, if you would follow me, please." Tron said quietly to Alan. Alan nodded, and touched Sam on the shoulder.

"I'm going to Tron's quarters. I don't know how long I'll be gone." Sam nodded.

"Ok, well, now that the club's back online, I guess we'll just hang out here. Help get the liquid energy that programs drink or something."

"Ok, Sam." Alan replied, and gestured Tron to enter the elevator first.

Tron touched the lightbar on the back wall of the elevator. The doors slid smoothly shut, and the elevator started downward, no longer scraping or rattling. Roy had repaired the damage to the shaft, too.

They fell the aforementioned four stories, but when the elevator doors opened with a chime, and Alan stepped out, Tron remained inside, standing stock still. Alan, puzzled, stepped back into the elevator, and examined the motionless program. To Alan's alarm, Tron appeared to have hung up, and now Alan understood why Sam had originally deemed this to be something of an emergency. Tron was apparently glitched.


	5. Chapter 5

"Tron?" Alan said, wondering what to do. Of course he knew what to do about a program that had stopped responding - from the other side of the screen. But what do you do about it when the program in question is standing there right in front of you? Especially a program that looks like you? Alan studied it - no, him - for just a moment, just taking it in that he had a doppelganger - or would that be avatar - who was a thinking, feeling computer program. _'Talk about AI!'_ Alan thought. But there was no time for this, Alan chastised himself. Not knowing what else to do, Alan started to reach for the black-clad program's Identity Disk, in the vague hope that if he removed it and then replaced it, that might be enough to "jumpstart" the program. As he pulled Tron aside by the shoulder, however, he touched the program's hair. A spark, like a static electric discharge, jumped from Alan to Tron. Alan yelped in pain and jerked his hand back, but Tron also jerked, and blinked his eyes.

"Tron, you ok?" Alan asked, still concerned. Tron looked at him, puzzled.

"Alan One? What's wrong?"

"You stopped responding. I think I gave you a bit of a jumpstart. What happened?" Alan patted Tron's arm reassuringly, but Tron's shoulders sagged.

"Did Sam Flynn tell you where I was found after his father's der - death?" The program asked in an apparent non sequitur. Alan frowned as he gestured Tron out of the elevator. As Tron led the way to his quarters, Alan replied,

"No. He didn't get farther than Kevin's death and his and Quorra's escape."

"I had fallen into the Sea of Simulation." Tron told his User. "I was found by a search engine later, but what you need to know is that the ISO's had come from the Sea, so, to prevent any more from rezzing, Clu implanted a virus into the Sea." Tron stopped at an unmarked door no different from any of the other doors in the corridor. Alan nodded understanding of what Tron had told him. The security program placed a hand to the small light beside the door and it derezzed. He stepped into the space beyond, and invited Alan in with a gesture. Alan walked into the small apartment.

"You think the virus has further corrupted your code." Alan speculated. Tron nodded.

"That's what Sam Flynn thinks, and I am sixty-two point three percent sure he is correct." Alan couldn't help a small grin.

"Only sixty-two point three?" He joked, but Tron took him literally.

"I also fell from a great height, and have other damage-" He indicated the facial scar "-as well as the tampering of my code that you know of. It is possible that the combination of those are responsible for the intermittent glitching I have been experiencing." Alan frowned at the cold, mechanical recitation. Was it because it was easier to deal with the trauma by emotionally distancing himself and resorting to the clinical, or was that also an effect of the - Alan was almost ready to call it a seizure, because that was what people did, and, to him, Tron was as much a person as Alan was - freeze-up earlier? Either way, Sam had been right to deem this an emergency, and Alan realized he had to deal with Tron's code problems right away.

Alan glanced around the apartment, and was surprised at what he saw. Comfortable seats at one end were grouped around a glowing fireplace just to the right of the door. On the wall to the right of that and in the back corner, a luxuriously large and ornate bed sat beneath a large wall hanging that looked like a fiber-optic fan, glowing pink to lavender to light blue to white and back to pink. Beside that, on the wall opposite the door, a huge window opened onto a balcony with a magnificent view of the city. A fluttering, glowing...something...hung on the wall next to the window, opposite the bed. Under the wall-hanging was a comfortable-looking sofa with a table that glowed stark white in front of it. Alan was a little puzzled at the design and feminine touches in the room, until he remembered the mention of Yori. Kevin's stories had indicated that Yori had assisted in the destruction of the MCP, hinting that Yori and Tron were a couple, although the young Sam had had no interest in "yucky, kissy stuff" at that age. Tron had also mentioned Yori, but he'd said that Clu had made him derezz her. The program equivalent of killing her, Alan presumed. _'Probably a test of loyalty, to make sure his programming changes were effective.'_ Alan thought with disgust and sadness. Obviously, Tron could not bring himself to get rid of Yori's influence in the apartment. As punishment for what he had done or a simple loving remembrance? Alan didn't know and refused to speculate. Now was not the time, anyway. Instead, Alan went to the sofa and sat down.

"Tron, please give me your disks." Tron, in a manner that seemed almost ritualistic, removed and separated his disks, knelt before Alan, and presented them to him in both hands, like a warrior of old presenting his sword to his king. Alan touched Tron reassuringly on the shoulder and took the disks from him. The User placed both disks on the table, side by side, and called up the information on both. He studied them, frowning.

"One disk seems to be your code, but the other is something else. Something that isn't complete. What is this?" Tron, still on one knee, raised his eyes to Alan.

"One disk is my own Identity Disk, but the other I took off one of Clu's Black Guards before defeating and derezzing him. Usually, that means the disk derezzes, too, but this one didn't. I liked the advantage in battle that two disks gave me, so I kept it." Tron frowned, then. "But Clu said he reformatted it so the Black Guard's program wouldn't interfere with my own. He lied?"

"It looks like part of the code has been deleted, but a lot of it is still on the disk." Alan told him grimly. "I'm guessing it could be to reinforce the reprogramming of your own code. That may be why you found it so hard to resist the Rinzler persona. It may also be what's causing the glitching now; a conflict between your Tron persona and this coding. I'm going to reformat this disk right now." And Alan suited action to words, although, to his surprise, the code didn't just vanish. Instead, it splashed out all over the table like a spilled drink. Startled, Tron leapt to his feet away from the spreading puddle of code, and Alan instinctively grabbed at it, trying to gather it up in both hands.

"Oops!" Alan blurted, startled, "when you reformat a disk in my world, the address table is scrambled, so the information stays on the disk, but unsearchable to the system." Alan figured that was the closest he could come to explaining how information is deleted in the Outer World. Information is not erased from the disk when it is reformatted, instead, the address table that tells the computer where on the disk the information is stored is scrambled, thereby making it impossible for the computer to find the information. Thereafter, the information is simply overwritten, with a new address table to tell the computer where the new information is. Which is why recovery programs work; they restore all or part of the FAT table. Here, however, in a computer version of the Law of Conservation of Energy, reformatting an Identity Disk removes the information from the disk, but then it doesn't simply cease to exist, instead, it has to go somewhere. In this case, all over the table and onto the floor. Chuckling, Alan started to gather the errant code up, while Tron, with a scathing look, bent to pick code off the floor and dump them into Alan's arms. It took a few nanoseconds - there were a lot of tiny pieces - but finally Tron tossed the last of it onto the pile. He gave Alan a look halfway between fondness and exasperation, and Alan shrugged sheepishly. Unfortunately, now Alan had no idea what to do with the armful of code. Finally, with a wicked smile, he reshaped it into a copy of Sam's dog, Marv. Alan thought it appropriate to repurpose something harmful into something helpful. Grinning, he presented the dog to Tron, who looked at it sceptically.

"What is it?" He asked suspiciously. Alan laughed.

"It's called a dog." He replied. "Users sometimes keep non-sentient life-forms as companions. In this case, there wasn't enough code to make it a fully-functional dog, but there was enough to make it into a kind of alarm with a number of virus definitions. It's called Mobile Anti-Virus Alert or Mava. He'll bark - make a high pitched, staccato vocal sound - if he encounters those codes." Tron looked at Alan, eyebrows raised, like he wasn't sure whether to thank his Creator for the gift, or have his code examined for bugs. In the end, the security program accepted the gift with reluctance, obviously reserving judgment until the dog could prove it's usefulness. Or, at least, it's harmlessness. For lack of anything better to do with it, Tron set it gingerly next to the door. It just sat there, occasionally wagging it's tail, tilting it's head or sticking it's tongue out and panting to indicate it's ready state. Tron then came back and sat on the sofa next to Alan, who, still chuckling, checked the reformatted disk to ensure it was, in fact, now empty. It was.

'Now for the hard part.' Alan thought, and examined Tron's coding closely. What he saw angered and appalled him. _'How dare he?'_ Alan thought, outraged. _'How dare he violate my program this way!'_ It wasn't just possessiveness on Alan's part, but the fact that, as Roy had stated earlier, this was like a program's version of rape, and it stirred Alan's protective instincts.

"Damn him!" Alan exclaimed, and pounded one fist on the table. Tron jumped, startled and little afraid.

"Alan One?" Tron asked tentatively. Alan forced himself to calm.

"Oh, it's not you I'm angry at, it's Clu. How dare he violate your code like this! If he wasn't already dead, I'd kick his ass." Alan sighed, then. "The tampering is worse than I thought, that's all. I figured he'd simply written an overlay to your programming that superimposed his commands over the ones I programmed in, and what was on the second disk reinforced that. But that's not what he did. He actually altered your code! This is going to be harder than I thought. I'm going to have to actually rewrite your code." He sighed again, and shifted on the sofa, getting comfortable for a long session. _'Looks like this is going to be an all-nighter.'_ He thought. _'Haven't done that in...way too long.'_ "What do programs drink around here, anyway?" He asked, trying for a little lightness and normalcy to reassure his still cautious program. Tron looked a little startled.

"Sorry, I'm not much on the niceties. Yori always complained..." Tron stopped, swallowed, changed the subject. "We drink energy. If this will take some time, you'll need replenishment." Alan nodded, and Tron moved to a bottle of neon blue liquid that sat beside two glasses on the mantlepiece. Alan hadn't even noticed they were there. Tron filled both glasses. He presented Alan with one, and sipped from the other one himself. Alan took the glass cautiously, and sniffed the contents. The liquid smelled faintly of ozone, but that was all. He took a tentative sip, and was startled to feel the tiny surge of energy that ran through him. Approvingly, he drank more deeply, the energy flowing through him. He felt better; renewed. Alan put the half-full glass on the table, took a deep breath, and got to work rewriting Tron's code.

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><p>AN: 1. Reformatting a disk: I think I got it right. Please let me know if I didn't. 2. Yes, I had fun writing this chapter.


	6. Chapter 6

Roy and Sam sat at the bar as two programs that looked identical to each other carried boxes that rattled of glass into the club. The bartender, whose name, they had learned, was Shaddix, directed them to put the four boxes on the floor behind the bar. Shaddix pulled a bottle of neon blue liquid from one of the boxes, poured the Users drinks, then began pulling more bottles from the boxes and putting them in the niches in the wall behind the bar.

Roy, renewed by the energy he'd been drinking, crossed the empty room to one of the huge window/walls and stood, staring out at the ethereal city below, admiring it's logical, wonderful lines; all soaring towers and lines of light glowing in other-worldly beauty.

"Hey, Sam," Roy asked with child-like enthusiasm. "Since Alan's probably going to be awhile, depending on how bad Tron's code is, can we go see some more of the city?" He couldn't tear his gaze from the splendor before him, so he didn't see Sam's shrug as the younger man put his glass on the bar.

"Sure, man, no problem." Sam nodded thanks to Shaddix, stood, and moved towards the elevator. With one last wondering glance, Roy followed him.

Instead of taking one of the lightrunners, Sam arbitrarily picked a direction and started walking. Roy fell into step beside him, but frequently hurried on ahead or fell behind as his attention was captured by a building or an object on the street the function of which he didn't recognize. _'He's like a kid on Christmas.'_ Sam thought, grinning. _'Well, Hannukah.'_ He corrected himself.

Sam didn't realize how far they'd come until they suddenly found themselves in a cul de sac between two squat, dark buildings not unlike the one the entrance portal was in. This wasn't the same sector, but another one in the same state of disuse. Suddenly disquieted, Sam glanced around quickly, trying to get his bearings in relation of the End of Line Club. He couldn't see it.

"Sam, any idea where we are?" Roy said, not liking this sector, either.

"No." Sam said, and started back out to the main thoroughfare. "Maybe I can figure out where we are if I get to a main cross-route." He threw back over his shoulder. Roy followed warily.

Suddenly, the dim glow from the thoroughfare was blotted out by several human-sized silhouettes. Sam gestured for Roy to stay back as the younger man approached the figures at the mouth of the cul de sac.

"Stop!" One of the figures commanded, but then Sam apparently got close enough to be recognized. "User!" The same voice breathed. Suddenly, weapons were drawn. Sam drew in a dismayed breath and pulled his disk from his back, activating both it and his helmet. He took a defensive stance, and waited for the attack.

A disk whizzed through the air at his head, and Sam yelled at Roy, "Look out," even as he deflected the disk with his own. Then he could spare no more attention for the older User as two more disks came at him. One he dodged, the other he deflected high, then brought his disk down in a sweeping arc to intersect the blade coming at him from the right. He kicked out, catching the blade-wielder in the stomach and pushing him back into two more programs coming up from behind.

Meanwhile, Roy awkwardly grabbed his disk off his back. He had not been provided with a gaming uniform, so there was no helmet to activate, but that didn't mean Roy was defenseless. It had been way too long since he'd played frisbee as a kid growing up in New York City, but he'd played for years in the close spaces of the city, so he was comfortable in this terrain. Roy tossed the disk, aiming past Sam. It hit an unsuspecting program in the face, derezzing it - in the dimness, Roy couldn't tell if their attackers were male or female or some of each. _'Do they even qualify as male and female or just look like it outwardly?'_ Roy wondered absently as his disk returned to him. Roy fumbled, dropped it, bent to pick it up, and thereby avoided a disk coming at him. The disk flew right over him, and Roy grabbed his disk and threw himself against the nearest wall to avoid the flying disk's return. Roy threw his disk again; this time it missed, and returned to him. Roy didn't drop it, this time, old reflexes coming back to him slowly and incompletely.

Further up the alley, Sam dodged another blade, dodged another disk throw from Roy which derezzed another program - he had to give the old man credit; he was no Tron, but on the other hand, he wasn't helpless, either - deflected another disk and whirled to slam an elbow into the face of a female program that got too close. She staggered back, voxels spurting from her nasal area.

Sam pressed forward, trying to keep as much distance as he could between their attackers and the less well-trained Roy. He advanced into the street, going on the offensive, bringing his disk up in a vicious uppercut that hit a male program's chin and kept on going, up through the top of his head, derezzing him. Sam whirled to his left and brought his disk down in a sweeping arc that cut into the stomach of another program, then kicking another in the knee before bringing his disk around to cut through the back of the downed program's neck.

Suddenly, there were no more attackers; they fled in different directions. Sam bent over, hands on his knees, breathing heavily from the exertion. Suddenly he looked up, and back into the alley.

"Roy?" He said, and when there was no answer, Sam jogged back into the darkness, calling, "Roy!" Heart in his throat, Sam searched the alley, but it was no use.

Roy was gone.

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><p>AN: I don't know much about fighting, so I hope this scene was not too terrible.


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: Originally, this chapter and the next were one, but it was long enough that I made it two chapters. At this point, it looks like the story will run about 12-15 chapters total.

Also, I'd like to thank GlowingGreenEyes, and especially, LuffyMarra for the kind reviews.

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><p>The first thing Alan did was to find Tron's memory file and transfer it onto the second disk as a read-only file that needed a password to change to editable. That way, Tron could assess the file, but it could not affect his programming. Well, any more than memories <em>could<em> affect Tron. And, since Tron had been online for a _very_ long time, the memory file was huge. It freed up a lot of space on his primary Identity Disk, so Alan figured he'd take advantage of the opportunity to upgrade Tron's code as well as rewriting it. It took Alan a long time to find all the bad code, remove it and rewrite it. The bad code he piled on the table for recycling later. Maybe he'd add it to Mava, or maybe he'd do something else with it. Alan wouldn't decide that until he saw how much of it there was. So far, it was, unfortunately, quite a bit.

About half-way through the rewriting process, Alan's back began to protest. He stood and stretched, deciding now would be a good time to take a break. Glancing around the apartment, Alan spotted Tron on the balcony, in a pose of relaxed alertness. He went out to join his program in surveying the wonderous view.

"It's magnificent." Alan said softly. Tron moved slightly, more a simple acknowledgment of Alan and what he'd said than for an actual need to move. "It's so hard to believe that Kevin did all this, at night and in his spare time. That it all went so wrong, and Kevin was trapped here, almost literally right under our noses, all that time." Tears threatened again, not just at the loss, but at the waste. If only Kevin had trusted someone! If only Kevin had trusted _him_; Alan was his best friend, and he'd tried to look out for the carefree programmer, but in the end, he'd failed miserably, and Alan was left with only his feelings of helplessness and, yes, anger. And maybe that was part of why he'd refused to give up the hope that Kevin was alive somewhere - because that meant acknowledging his failure. And, perhaps, his involvement in the Flynn Lives Organization was an unconscious bid for redemption for that failure. Alan didn't really want to think about that now, because he had rebuilding to do. And, maybe, that was what he needed anyway.

Alan turned away from the elegant lines and vibrant lights of the city and addressed a subject he didn't want to broach, but which was too important not to.

"Tron, I've moved your memory files onto the other disk. You can access them as a read-only file." Tron stirred uneasily, turned to Alan.

"You won't delete them?" The program asked, disappointment and pleading in his tone. He bent his head. _'In shame or anger?'_ Alan wondered sympathetically. "Then I...bow to your wisdom, Alan One." Tron finally whispered. Alan's resolve wavered, but held firm. He realized, though, that Tron needed an explanation for his seeming act of cruelty.

"Tron, I'm making you keep the memories because they are a part of who you are. They influence your actions and inform your choices. You've learned hard but valuable lessons because of the things that have happened to you and the things you've done, and deleting them would make you a different person. A less wise person. We have a saying: Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Do you understand?" Tron stared out at the city a moment, trying to process what Alan One was saying. For a nanosecond, he'd thought making him keep the memories was to punish him. But, thinking about it, he realized Alan One really was wise in this regard.

"These memories - the terrible things I've done - I thought I knew what pain was, but I've learned otherwise in these last few cycles. I don't know how to exist with this kind of pain." Alan placed a sympathetic hand on Tron's shoulder, squeezing gently. "But," the program went on, "if you think it best to keep these memories, then I will do my best to accept and use them as you wish. I do understand your motives, I just wish..." Tron sighed. "It doesn't matter. You are right. I don't like it, but I need these memories to keep anything like this from happening again. Thank you for your wisdom, Alan One." Tron finished formally, but this time, his back straightened with resolve. Touched, Alan moved his hand from Tron's shoulder to his cheek. He patted it fondly before going back inside to continue his rewrite of Tron's code.

It took Alan what he figured was more than half a millicycle - close to six hours in the Outer World - to finish, and at the end of it, Alan stretched and yawned, picked up both disks, and went out on the balcony, where Tron stood once more, watching over his city.

"Ok, I'm finished with your code. I've not only removed Clu's corruption and rewritten those sections, I've also upgraded you, somewhat. There's only so much I can do given the limitations of this Grid - I'm sorry, but the software is rather obsolete - but I've done what I can. Because I've done so much rewriting, I think instead of simply rebooting you, I'd better do a full recompile." Tron nodded.

"In that case, I'll be going offline, so I'd better lay down for this." The program told Alan, and went back into the apartment. "This could take some time." Tron warned Alan as he sat down on the bed. Alan nodded acknowledgment as he put the disks together. Tron scooted up on the bed, and nodded his readiness. Alan placed the disks on Tron's back and twisted to activate the read-write process. Tron immediately fell back on the bed as the recompile process started.

Alan watched for a moment, then wandered back over to the table, contemplating the pile of code sitting there. Several ideas went through his mind as to what to do with it - a piece of artwork, maybe - but, in the end, he used it to give Mava more functionality. Now, the dog was a bit bigger, and was able to defend itself - at least a little - with a good, strong bite.

Alan wandered back out onto the balcony for awhile, staring at the incredible city arrayed before him. As he took it in, he noticed absently the lights of a building off to his right and far in the distance flicker once, twice, then go dark. 'Even programs have to have downtime sometimes.' He noted idly. He re-entered the apartment to check on Tron.

It didn't take as long as Alan feared for the recompile process to finish and Alan's repairs to start to manifest - most obviously in the scar on Tron's face, which repaired itself, but also, to Alan's surprise, Tron's whole appearance changed. Not significantly, but as the new code took effect in the form of white light which sheathed his body and moved downward in a wave, Tron's face was rewritten as older, with gray in his hair, and his circuitry lines changed, becoming longer and more numerous.

_'The grizzled old warrior, who has survived to become wiser if sadder and more cynical...'_ Alan thought, both sad and proud.

Tron opened his eyes to see Alan sitting on the sofa watching him, drink in his hand. The program just lay there a moment, processing the changes. Then he stood up and ran a self-diagnostic. He removed his disks and began moving through a series of defensive and offensive moves, testing himself. He liked the results. He felt stronger, his moves smoother and more precise. He also felt new subroutines that would gave him functionality in additional types of weaponry. He grinned approvingly and with awe at Alan One. He walked to Alan and went to one knee before his Creator.

"Thank you for removing Clu's code and gifting me with your upgrade." The program said humbly. Alan was touched, but embarrassed. He clapped Tron on the shoulder, squeezed once reassuringly, then coaxed the program to his feet. Tron grinned once more. Then he sobered as he tentatively tested access of his old memory file on the other disk. He nodded as access was achieved smoothly and rapidly, but he did not probe the memories further. He glanced around the apartment, his upgraded functionality allowing better observational and analytical ability. He quickly noticed that Mava was fourteen percent larger than he had been when Alan One first presented the dog to him. Tron nodded to the dog now lying on the floor near the door in sleep mode.

"You made him bigger?" Tron asked, amused. Alan grinned in reply and shrugged.

"Well, I had to do something with the bad code I removed from you. So, I made him bigger and gave him a decent defensive bite." Tron shrugged.

"We've been here for hours - uh, more than half a millicycle." Alan said. "I think it might be a good idea to see what kind of trouble Roy and Sam have gotten into." Tron nodded and went to the door. As he passed over the thresh-hold, Mava switched from sleep mode to active mode, and followed him out the door. Tron looked at Alan with raised eyebrows. "Well, he is a _mobile_ anti-virus alert." Alan replied, amused. Tron sighed in resignation and allowed the dog to follow him out the door.


	8. Chapter 8

A/N: This chapter is actually more important than it seems at first, so, while on the surface it seems to be just filler, please bear with it.

Also, thanks for the kind reviews! Luffymarra, I actually did the "older" Tron on purpose; on the special features disk of "Tron", it is revealed that the character, as originally conceived, was an "older, sort of beaten, warrior type", and I thought that that concept was actually more appropriate to the character as he would be now, after the events of Tron: Legacy. Therefore, I arranged to make him that way.

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><p>They took the elevator back up to the End of Line Club.<p>

"You've been here close to a millicycle, now, and you may not get back to the portal before it closes." Tron said, concerned. "Is Quorra waiting just in case?" Alan nodded.

"I'd rather get back before the portal closes, if only because a long time has passed in the Outer World, but it won't kill me if we don't make it in time. I'm guessing we can communicate with Quorra somehow, or maybe Sam told her to re-open it after a certain amount of time."

"Both, actually." Tron told his User. "Sam said the last time he was here - about a millicycle before you arrived - he told Quorra to open the portal a quarter of a millicycle after it closes - about two hours your time. I'm assuming he did the same this time. Or, you can communicate with her from the Input/Output tower." Alan nodded acknowledgment as the elevator stopped, and the doors slid open with a chime. Tron stepped out, heading for the bar, Mava, on the alert, at his side. Alan stepped out last. The Club had a few patrons, now, but Tron didn't see Sam Flynn or User Roy. He went to the bar, and nodded at Shaddix.

"Where are the other Users?" He asked.

"Went to see more of the city." Shaddix replied. "Left about half a millicycle ago." Tron turned to Alan, who had heard. He sighed.

"Well, this is a big city. I think it would be faster for Quorra to do a search for them from outside." Tron nodded.

"The I/O Tower isn't far from here. We'll take a lightrunner." Tron said. The two men and the dog trotted out.

On the street, Tron and Alan both noticed that both lightrunners were still parked where they'd left them.

"Well," Alan said with a shrug and the knowledge of the experienced traveller, "Best way to see a city is on foot."

"Then they couldn't have gone as far, either." Tron replied. He and Alan got into one of the lightrunners.

The part of the city where the tower and End of Line Club were located was busy and densely populated, and Alan marveled at the massive buildings and the variety of programs that served them. As he stared at them, he idly noticed the lights on a couple of buildings here and there flicker briefly, then go dark, however, he was too preoccupied by thoughts of Sam and Roy to really think about it. It had been six hours, why hadn't they come back to the End of Line Club? Were they in trouble? Or had they simply suddenly realized the time and decided to meet Alan and Tron at the Exit Portal?

As they drove, the population thinned, and the buildings were smaller, with less of them showing signs of occupation. Soon, they were passing through vacant spaces, but Alan could see the structure that must be the I/O tower. It was a short, but spacious round building with a conical emitting array at the top. As they moved closer, Alan was amazed at the size of the structure; relatively speaking, it was easily the size of an entire city block.

Tron parked the lightrunner out front, and the two men and the dog entered the building. There was a large lobby or reception area inside, at the back of which was a large, open set of stairs. At the top was a peculiarly-shaped object, vaguely conical, but with strange angles cut into it. As Tron jogged towards it, the whole thing rotated around to reveal a man in intricately-circuited robes and a tall, ornate head-dress, sitting at an equally ornate desk or control console.

"Halt!" The man commanded as Tron, Alan and Mava reached the bottom of the stairs. "Tron, what do you want?" The aged-looking program asked wearily. "There is no User to communicate with anymore." He said. "Why I'm still active I don't know." He added sadly. Tron took a step forward.

"There are Users to communicate with again, Heuz." He said earnestly. "They have not forsaken us after all." The Tower Guardian perked up a bit at that, and finally noticed Alan standing beside Tron. "Who are you?" He asked curiously. "You are...not like the other programs what used to come here."

"I'm not a program. I'm Alan Bradley. What you call a User. There is someone waiting for word, and I need to communicate with her." The Tower Guardian eyed him suspiciously.

"Difficult proposition. If you are a User, how will you communicate with another User?" At a loss, Alan looked to Tron, who grinned in amusement.

"I must show Alan One the procedure. " Heuz contemplated them for a moment, then sighed in resignation.

"All right, all right. Who is your...communication to be with?"

"Quorra." Tron stated firmly. "The former ISO now resides in the Outer World. Please, may we pass?" The Guardian nodded slowly, almost ritualistically.

"You may pass."

"Mava, stay here." Tron told the dog, who wagged his tail, yipped enthusiastically, and sat down. Tron led Alan up the stairs and past the Tower Guardian.

Inside, a tunnel with a vaulted ceiling heavily lined with light led into a large, bell-shaped chamber, also heavily circuited, and with a small platform in the center that glowed with power. As they advanced into the chamber, a shaft of light came down to encompass the one-person platform. The bright light pulsed gently. Tron gestured to the platform with a nod.

"You need to stand on the platform and raise your disk into the light." Tron told Alan, feeling awkward having to explain something that every program knew from the moment they rezzed. "Heuz will input the information needed to initiate contact with...Quorra." He'd almost said "your User", but, of course, that wasn't true in this case. "Then, just speak, and Quorra will hear you." Alan nodded acknowledgment, and stepped onto the platform. The light pulsed down around him, falling like a warm, gentle rain. Alan awkwardly took the disk off his back, suddenly remembered it was password protected, and set up an open file for Quorra - or anyone else - to use in a case such as this. Then he raised it in both hands. Alan stood like that a moment, feeling a bit silly, until he felt the power build, felt the gentle tug of the communication beam. Quickly, the communication beam's strength increased and pulled the disk from Alan's hands. It rose slowly in the light, increasing in speed as it rode through the top of the bell-shaped housing.

"User Alan!" Quorra's worried voice suddenly came down to Alan. "What's going on? The portal will close in less than a...an hour!" She stumbled over the still-unfamiliar time referent.

"Quorra, it's ok. It just took me longer to rewrite Tron's code than I thought it would. And now we've been separated from Sam and Roy. Can you do a search for them, please?"

"Of course, User Alan! Wait, please."

Quorra's fingers flew over the keyboard. She keyed in the search parameters for Sam and for User Roy. It took several nan...a couple of minutes...for the search to return the results, and what was displayed on the screen puzzled her. She reentered the search, but got back the same results. Still confused, she resumed her communication with User Alan.

"User Alan, I've done the search as requested. User Roy is in Sector A28, which is near the main power controls, but Sam is...elsewhere."

"Elsewhere? Where?"

"Well, mainly, he is in Sector S20, but the search is also returning results in Sectors L73, M11, W88..."

"What?" Alan said, startled. But then he thought about it for a moment, and his jaw dropped at the sudden stunning idea that popped into his head. "My god..." He breathed. Then said, "Quorra, when you did the search, what parameter did you use for the filename?"

"I used SamFlynn." She replied in a puzzled tone of voice.

Alan thought about it for a moment, then grinned as he suddenly understood. However, he needed Sam's disk to help confirm it.

"Do the search again, but use asteriskFlynn as the filename." Alan told her.

"Ok. Please wait." Quorra replied, obviously confused. A subjective eternity later, her voice came back to Alan. "I have over two dozen search results, User Alan. What does it mean?" But Alan didn't want to get her hopes up. His idea might not work.

"Just give me all the Sectors the search turned up, then prepare to open the portal in one millicycle." Alan commanded.

"A full millicycle?" Quorra asked, concern in her voice.

"Confirmed." Alan told her. "One full millicycle. This may take awhile."

"All right." Quorra responded doubtfully. A moment later, Alan spotted movement in the shaft of light. He reached up for his disk as it descended slowly, took it and examined it. He touched the strip Sam had shown him, and the new information appeared in the unprotected file. There was a disheartening number of sectors listed, but Alan had a couple of ideas on what to do about that.

Later, though. First, he and Tron had to get to Sam and Roy.

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><p>AN: Yes, I remembered almost too late that Alan had password-protected his disk, so I had to so something about it. I hate plot holes, don't you?


	9. Chapter 9

The first thing Roy noticed was a pounding headache. _'I am way too old to be going on benders like this.'_ He thought groggily.

"...Derezzing?" A male voice asked.

"No...can't tell you why...hit too hard." A female voice said accusingly. Roy groaned and opened his eyes. He blinked a couple of times to clear his vision, and realized he was laying on a hard surface, looking up - straight into a hard, world-weary female face. Roy rolled away from the woman - he'd been laying with his head in her lap - and said,

"Ooohh, did anybody get the number of the truck that hit me?" But then, his memory came back, and he remembered what happened.

They'd been lost in what Roy assumed was a bad sector of the Grid when they were attacked. Some of the attackers had drawn Sam out of the alley and into the street so that the rest could slip in behind to attack Roy directly. He'd fought with disk and fists, but there had been too many of them, and it had been too long since his days rescuing-

"Hey, User, you with us now?" The male voice said harshly, and Roy, thought process derailed, looked up. Five people...er, programs stood ranged around him. They wore plain, utilitarian overalls with tool-belts containing objects Roy had too many other things to think about than to speculate on the use of at the moment.

"Yeah." Roy replied. "I'm with you. Question is, _why_ am I with you, and where are we?"

"We need you. Desperately. Come with us." The female told him. Roy glanced around at the hard faces surrounding him.

"I don't suppose I have a choice, do I?" He asked, but it was more a statement than a question.

"No." The harsh male told him anyway. "You don't." And, with a wave of one hand, he gestured for the others to follow him. Seeing no alternative, Roy fell in with them.

They walked along a rough corridor with shapes jutting out at odd angles, and pipes and cables running with peculiar randomness throughout. Roy tried at first to engage them in some sort of conversation, if only to find out where they were and why they'd taken him, but none of them said anything, and, eventually, Roy fell silent. _'These programs don't seem to like Users much.'_ He speculated. _'Maybe they intend to make an example of me.'_ It wouldn't be the first time he'd taken a beating just for being who he was, but it had been a long time. Long enough that he'd become complacent. _'Well, obviously, that was a mistake.'_ Roy thought bitterly. _'People don't change. I guess programs don't, either.'_

They made their way along a catwalk high above a concrete pit lined with more pipes and cables. Roy noticed with a frown that there were pixelated cracks - some ominously large - in the walls of the pit. On the other side of the catwalk, a concrete wall rose higher than Roy could see in the dimness. Huge chunks were missing from the wall. They walked through a door and down another short, concrete tunnel with more cracks in it, finally emerging into what once was probably an efficient and brightly-lit a control room with gauges on three walls and a console with controls in the center. However, now, Roy noticed, many of the lights were flickering or had gone dark, the doorway through which they had come had chunks missing from it, the needles of some of the gauges on the walls were all the way over to the left, indicating zero reading, and many of the lights on the console were dark. Roy frowned. _'This can't be good.'_ He thought. '_Something's wrong. What are these controls and why is everything in such bad shape? Clu's doing?'_ He wondered.

"Well, this is why you're here." Harsh Male said, indicating the controls. "This is where we're supposed to monitor and modulate power ingress and consumption. But, as you can see, this place has been so badly neglected that we're on the verge of total system shut-down. And I do mean the whole Grid." Roy processed that for a moment, but then said,

"Wait, Sam told us that the reason Clu took over was because of problems with power consumption. Didn't he solve it?"

The woman laughed, a hard, bitter sound.

"He thought he solved it by killing all the ISO's and patching our systems. A thousand-cycle old patch, for User's sake! We tried to tell Quorra. We tried to tell SamFlynn. We've been trying to tell Tron or Rinzler or whoever he is now for I don't even know how many microcycles, but he's too preoccupied with his own problems to realize how close we are to losing the Grid entirely. Just look at this!" She said, not bothering to hide the desperation in her voice. "We've been working without downtime for microcycles! We've lost three programs who crashed and two more derezzed for lack of simple maintenance! And it's not enough. It's not nearly enough! We need more than just a patch!" And she said the word "patch" like it was a dirty word. _'Actually,'_ Roy thought in a remote corner of his mind, his programmer sensibilities offended, _'it is.'_ But the woman was still speaking, pleading, not just desperation, but actual fear in her voice now, "User, please, if you don't rewrite this whole module, it will fail, and the whole Grid will go down!" Her voice broke and tears of fear rolled down the exhaustion-lined face. Harsh Male touched his shoulder to get his attention. With ominous coldness and quiet, he said,

"User, we calculate that this routine will crash in half a millicycle, and the whole Grid will go down within nanoseconds after that." And he indicated the gauges on the control console. Roy studied the readouts, remembered the cracks and missing chunks, and paled. They weren't kidding. From what little he could understand of what he was seeing, this module really was that bad. Stunned, Roy sank into one of the worn and pixelated chairs. The whole Grid was going to go down in less than four hours unless he rewrote it - practically from the base up, as far as he could tell.

"User, please help us!" Another of the female programs pleaded. "You're our only hope!" And Roy was almost laughably reminded that Sam had said almost the same thing just hours ago, and Roy himself had made a joke about it. Well, these programs weren't joking now. Roy took in the exhausted, desperate, fear-filled faces.

"I don't know if I can fix this whole module in that amount of time." He protested.

"Please, you have to try!" Harsh Male said. Roy exhaled a sigh of dismay. With the whole Grid in imminent danger of being lost, what could he do but try to help? Roy nodded.

"This is gonna get ugly." He muttered. He shifted in the uncomfortable chair, placed both hands above the console, took a long, deep breath, and put his hands down onto the top of the console.

Roy connected with the system, calling up a schematic on the surface of the console - and was appalled. Even with the programs' doomsaying, Roy was still unprepared for what he saw. The power module was teetering on the verge of a fatal runtime error. _'Talk about a Blue Screen of Death!'_ Roy examined the code closely. He had to do this fast, and get it right the first time. He didn't want to think about what would happen if the routine glitched due to bugs. In fact, Roy realized as he continued to examine the code before him, it would be easier and more efficient to completely write a new module than to repair the corruption to this one. Roy hesitated just a moment, then plunged in, one hand on the console, keeping the connection, the other directly manipulating code before him. Roy frantically wrote code for the replacement module, not only making it more efficient, but upgrading it, as well. And, even more than with the End of Line Club, he knew he had to get this right the first time. There would be no second time.

0101 0010 0110 1111 0111 1001 0010 0000 0101 0010 0111 0101 0110 1100 0110 0101 0111 0011 0010 0001

Outside the I/O Tower, Alan had just finished telling Tron what he had learned.

"User Roy is in Sector A28? Hmm..." Tron trailed off. That Sector sounded familiar. There was something about it...something important...Suddenly Tron's head came up in stunned revelation. "The Power Control Module!" He blurted.

"What about the Power Control Module?" Alan demanded to know. Tron looked at him with something akin to panic. He ran out the door, towards the lightrunner. Alan and Mava following close on his heels.

"The programs there have been warning of impending system crash for several cycles, now. Just before Sam arrived the last time, they told me there is a ninety-seven percent chance of system crash in two millicycles." Tron told Alan grimly as he drove at break-neck speed through the streets. Alan looked around in alarm.

"That would put it...any minute now!"

"Someone must have convinced User Roy of the danger. He must be there to repair the module." Tron told his User tensely. _'I hope.'_ He thought, but did not say.

As they drove through the streets, Alan noticed more buildings whose lights flickered a couple of times before going dark. _'The system must be shutting down routines in an attempt to save itself.'_ Alan glanced at Tron, but said nothing. There was nothing to say. By the look of things, Tron wouldn't get Alan there in time to help. Either Roy would succeed in repairing the program himself, or he wouldn't. They continued the drive in grim silence.

0101 0100 0111 0010 0110 1111 0110 1110 0010 0001 0010 0000 0101 0100 0111 0010 0110 1111 0110 1110 0010 0001 0010 0000

Roy could tell time was moving too quickly, but he could not afford to pay attention to it. His whole concentration was on his task. With one of the programs quietly counting down time until program crash, Roy determinedly remained calm and focused. Only with his decades of experience as a programmer did he write code hurriedly but with no mistakes, line by line, building a new module.

Finally, his task was complete. Roy set the code to compile. He sat, watching the timer on the console as it ticked down. He'd taken nearly half a millicycle - three and a half hours, in actuality - and he and the programs all waited tensely for the new module to finish compiling. Finally, it was done, and now the exhausted programs took over. They had to switch over from the old module to the new without any interruption, or the system would crash anyway. Tensely, he watched the programs at their work.

"Synching Roy Two Power Control Module."  
>"Synching Flynn Power Control Module."<br>"Prepare for switch-over on my mark."  
>"Preparing for switch-over on your mark."<br>"Twenty seconds to module crash."  
>"Three, two, one, mark!"<br>And both programs performed the switch-over simultaneously, the one shutting down the Flynn Power Control Module, as the other executed the Roy Two Power Control Module.

A bright white light winked into existence from the console, radiating outward like a ripple on water. Behind the moving line of lightning-like light, the console, the walls, everything was rewritten. The room, formerly dim and shabby, was renewed; missing chunks in walls and floor replaced; cracks repaired. Even the programs, sitting or standing tensely at their stations, were renewed. It took awhile, due to the amount of damage, but finally the reboot was finished, and Roy nodded in satisfaction. He put one hand on the console, calling up the schematics and checked to make sure the module was running properly. It was.

"Flynn Power Control Module offline, Roy Two Power Control Module online and running at ninety-nine percent efficiency. We are at eighty percent capacity!" Harsh Male - no longer harsh but grinning crazily - announced, and the room erupted into raucous cheers. Some exhausted programs wept with weariness and joy. Several programs clapped Roy on the back in congratulations. Roy, limp with exhaustion and relief, put his head down on the console.

Suddenly, Tron and Alan were in the doorway, eyebrows identically raised in question. Roy, grinning tiredly for the second time that night - but with more riding on this one - noted the changes in Tron immediately.

"Looks like you got Tron's code repaired." Roy said. Alan gestured around them.

"Looks like you had some repair work yourself." Alan said.

"You have no idea." Roy told him.

* * *

><p>AN: I hope this chapter comes somewhere close to being right as far as computer programming goes. Or, at least, isn't so wrong that real computer programmers can't suspend their disbelief.


	10. Chapter 10

A/N: This is all I have written so far, so it may be a few days before I can get another chapter up. Sorry. (By the way, there are some more notes at the end of this chapter.)

* * *

><p>To say the Power Control programs were grateful was an understatement. Roy was thoroughly embarrassed by the joyous, awe-struck programs' effusive thanks. And, while Tron was not inclined to forgive the programs so easily for kidnapping Roy, Roy was. After all, they'd already tried telling anyone who would listen, and no one had done anything to help. In their desperation, kidnapping Roy had seemed the only option left. The fact that Roy was little the worse for wear - and had a nice bottle of energy in hand to boot - was the only reason Tron (grumbling all the way) allowed himself to be pushed out of the building.<p>

That, and the fact that they still needed to go round up Sam.

Reluctantly, Tron allowed Alan to drive the lightrunner, while he rode alongside on a lightcycle.

"S20 is a bad sector." Tron told the Users. "Be careful. Sam could be in trouble when we get there."

0100 0001 0110 1100 0110 0001 0110 1110 0010 0000 0101 0010 0110 1111 0110 0011 0110 1011 0111 0011 0010 0001

After Sam lost Roy, he'd wandered around, trying to get back to the End of Line Club. Unfortunately, he was hopelessly lost, and the couple of programs he tried to talk to either looked at him like he was glitched, or attacked him. After the second trio of programs he derezzed, Sam decided discretion was the better part of valor, and took to keeping in the shadows and not talking to anyone.

After several hours and a gridbug attack, Sam realized his best bet was just to try to make his way to a better sector of the city, closer to the Sea of Simulation, and see if he could hop a Solar Sailer to the Exit Portal.

Finally Sam could see, between the towering buildings of a brighter and more populous sector of the city, the beginning of the Outlands surrounding the Sea. Relieved, he sighed, but stayed in the shadows for a time, watching programs walking or driving by. At last, he spotted a female program wearing a slinky, black dress with blue circuitry. She appeared to be alone, and Sam finally decided to approach her.

"Um, hi," Sam said, trying to appear harmless. After all, he didn't want _her_ thinking _he_ was a rogue program or something.

"Hi." She replied, her voice open and friendly. She reminded Sam of Emily Brandsen, the first girl he ever kissed.

"I'm Sam, and I was wondering if you could help me. I need to get to the nearest Solar Sailer platform. Is it far from here?"

"I'm Novarg." The program told him, smiling. "Of course I can help you. Please, come with me." Smiling in return, Sam allowed her to take his hand and lead him down the street. "So, Sam, I take it you're not from this sector." Novarg said as they walked.

"Um, no, actually, but I really need to get to the Solar Sailer platform as soon as possible. I'm...uh...a new program for monitoring payload percentages." Sam improvised, thinking it best not to reveal that he was a User until he found out what Novarg thought of Users. For all he knew, she was a User-Hater with friends, and that would be bad.

"A new program, hmm?" Novarg said, smile widening. "These circuits can be so cold to a new program all by himself. Perhaps we can get together when you have downtime, and I can show you around." By now, Novarg had slid her hand from his to take his arm. They walked almost a block, arm in arm, before Sam noticed a peculiar tingling sensation where Novarg touched him. It increased in intensity until, hiding a frown and a feeling of disquiet, he disengaged from her as casually as he could. However, she immediately grabbed his arm again, holding with almost bruising strength. Now on the alert, Sam yanked his arm away while grabbing the disk from his back with his other hand.

"What...?" Sam started, shaking his still-tingling arm.

"What kind of program are you?" Novarg asked at the same time. "Why can't I infect you?" She continued, angry and confused, grabbing the disk from her back and attacking.

"Oh, man." Sam said as he deflected her attack. "Where in Hell did you come from?" But it was a rhetorical question, and Novarg's answer was to draw a handle from the small of her back with the hand not holding her disk. A lightblade emerged from the handle, and she thrust at Sam. He parried with his disk and danced out of range. In answer, she threw her disk, which he dodged, and whipped his own disk at her. She deflected with her blade, then caught her disk in the other hand. Sam turned to run, but found nine other programs identical to Novarg standing in his way.

Suddenly, a bigger version of Marv appeared, barking and growling, and sank his teeth into the leg of the program in front of Sam and to his left. At the same time, two disks whizzed out of the dimness and derezzed the programs to the right of the one the dog was hanging off of.

Hearing a scraping of shoe against street behind him, Sam whirled just in time to block a blow from Novarg One's blade. Sam didn't like leaving the other programs at his back, but had no choice but to trust that whomever just took out the other programs could do the same to the rest.

Tron held up his hands for his returning disks to smack into them with satisfying force. The remaining seven programs - one with a gaping, pixelated wound in her leg where Mava had torn out a chunk - turned to face Tron and the other two Users.

"Help Sam!" Tron called to Mava, and the dog yipped once in acknowledgment and ran towards the program attacking Sam. At the same time, the other seven programs all drew lightblades. Tron didn't give them the chance to use them, as he threw one disk again while retaining the other to defend himself with. To his surprise, both Alan and Roy threw theirs a beat behind. Roy's connected with the head of one of the women, derezzing her. Tron's derezzed another program, and Alan's missed high, ricocheted off a building, and hit the woman attacking Sam in the back of the head, derezzing her. Alan gaped a second, almost missing his disk as it returned to him.

"Yeah, cause you meant to do that." Roy said, grinning.

"That's my story and I'm sticking to it!" Alan agreed, then threw again. This time, his disk was deflected by a lightblade, and, as the female programs closed with them, Alan decided that if he was going to be forced to fight in close quarters, he would be better off taking on the wounded program. He feinted high and struck low with his disk, catching the program in the waist. When she bent double, spurting voxels, Alan brought down his disk on the back of her neck with all his strength. She derezzed immediately.

With Novarg One derezzed, Sam tried to sneak up on one of the remaining four programs. She heard him at the last nano-second, however, and whirled, bringing her blade around to block his disk. But then Mava once more used his teeth, biting the program on the calf and hanging on as she tried to shake him loose. She couldn't do that and defend against Sam at the same time, though, and he got in a strike under her defenses, slicing deeply along her ribs. She dropped her blade and Sam finished her off with his disk in her throat.

Tron's disks flashed as he parried blows from both disk and blade, but then he sliced off the blade hand of the program he was fighting, grabbed the blade, and was finally able to test his new functionality by parrying her disk with the blade while thrusting his other disk into her chest. Even as she became a pile of fading voxels on the street, Tron turned to another program, smoothly using the blade in one hand and disk in the other. His new functionality with additional weapons worked flawlessly as he parried and thrust, trading blows with the program until finally she over-reached, thrusting too far, and Tron immediately exploited her mistake by slicing her blade in half, then stepping inside the sword to derezz her with his blade. He turned to the last program just in time to watch Roy dodge under her defenses, kick her in the kneecap, punch her in the stomach, then follow up with a straight-arm to the wrist of her blade hand, pushing it out of the way, while he brought his disk to her throat, derezzing her.

"Now I see where Ram got it from." Tron said with quiet approval. Panting, Roy asked,

"Who _was_ Ram anyway?" Tron smiled sadly.

"He was, believe it or not, an actuarial program that was conscripted into the games of the Old System because he was a User-Believer. Said he worked for a big insurance company. He was also an amazingly good fighter. And my friend."

"And you still miss him." Roy said sympathetically. Tron nodded.

"I do." Tron told him. At that moment, Sam trotted up to them, followed by a smug-looking Mava.

"She said her name was Novarg, but I don't know where she came from. This computer isn't hooked up to the internet."

"Novarg?" Roy said. "Yeah, I remember that virus. Attacked programs with Dillinger's OS 2004, and spread a Denial of Service against Encom's website." Alan chuckled once, wryly.

"Oh, yes, I remember that one, too. Law enforcement ruled out anyone at either Dillinger Systems or Encom, but never did find out who wrote it. It was huge, though. And nasty."

"Sam, where did you get this computer anyway?" Roy wondered. Sam shrugged.

"It was an old company laptop I found in one of the supply closets. I used it because it was old enough to run the Grid but still had enough memory to give it some growing room."

"And, apparently, it was in the closet because it was infected." Roy sighed. "You need to run an anti-virus program on it."

"Yeah, but where am I gonna find one that'll run on this system?"

"Let me think about it when we get back." Roy assured him. "In the meantime, while we were on our way here, Alan told me something pretty amazi-"

"Wait!" Sam interrupted. "The portal!" He whirled to look. The light was gone. "Alan-"

"Don't worry, Sam." Alan assured the younger man. "I've already been in communication with Quorra. She's to open the portal again in eight hours-a millicycle."

"A whole millicycle? Why?" Sam said, startled.

"Because of what I learned."

They walked back to the lightrunner, Alan explaining what Quorra's search for Sam had turned up.

"I think I know what happened." Alan finished. "Sam, log into your disk and let me see your genetic code, please." Shrugging, Sam did so, while Alan grabbed his own disk and called up the information in the unprotected file where Quorra had stored the information she'd gotten.

"See?" Alan pointed to pieces of Sam's code that matched what Quorra had found. "Remember your high school biology? Where do our genes come from?" Sam exhaled in surprise.

"We get half our genetic code from each parent." He said, stunned. "So when she ran the search for me, she got results from pieces of dad's code that matched mine."

"Your dad's code is still here." Roy breathed. "But in pieces. If we can gather the pieces of his code and recompile them..."

"I had Quorra widen her search for all code labelled "Flynn", and I have the search results. This may not work, though." He warned bluntly.

"And it looks like it's all over the place. Getting it all together will be a bitch, too." Roy added.

"A search engine tasked to go find the code working with a recovery program tasked to retrieve it should work, although it'll take awhile." Tron put in. "But how will you recompile the code and boot it up?" Alan thought about it a moment, then said,

"Have the search engines bring it all to the Sea of Simulation. I have an idea."

"But the virus Clu infected it with?" Tron frowned. But Alan smiled, turned to Roy, and clapped him on the shoulder.

"We need to get back to the I/O Tower to tell Quorra to open the Exit Portal. Roy and I need to take a trip outside." Roy nodded understanding. It would be easier to remove a virus that widespread from the outside.

"And, while you are gone, Sam and I will go to a search engine that resides in a nearby Sector. She knows a recovery program she can work on this with."

Alan and Roy took the lightrunner and headed back to the I/O Tower, while Tron handed Sam his spare lightcycle handlebar, and the program led the User in the opposite direction.

* * *

><p>AN: Whew! I really had to struggle for this one. And, yes, the fight scene did defeat me, although I did the best I could. Sorry! And, by the way, Novarg (aka MyDoom) really was a virus that was spread via e-mail back in 2004. It attacked computers running Windows, and was, among other things, tasked with perpetrating a distributed denial of service against the website of a software company that sold Unix software. No one was ever caught, however.

By the way, congrats to Iskandra, who found my secret messages! Who else? ;)


	11. Chapter 11

A/N: Ok, here's the next chapter. I'm pretty sure I have two or possibly three (if the next one is too long & I split it) chapters left. But I've been wrong about that before.

Also, yay! to all those who discovered & deciphered my secret codes. I don't think I'll have reason to use any more, though. They were just section breaks anyway.

* * *

><p>When Alan and Roy appeared in the room in the basement, Quorra was waiting with a worried expression.<p>

"What's happening? Is everything all right? First you said a millicycle, then-" Alan gently interrupted her, placing a reassuring hand on her upper arm.

"It's ok, Quorra. Just a little change in plans." He assured her. He sat down at the laptop that held the Grid, and called up the C: prompt. Then he began searching for the file that held the Sea of Simulation program. Roy nodded to acknowledge Quorra's presence, then touched Alan on the shoulder.

"If you can handle this for a while, there's something else I really need to do right now." He told his friend. Alan nodded without turning.

"Sure, I got it for now, but I may need your help in a little while. The Sea of Simulation is probably a pretty big program and an extra pair of eyes looking for the virus would be good."

"Ok." Roy replied, and left the room.

He went to the Archive Room on the fifteenth floor. The Archive Room was a large, strictly climate-controlled room where back-up copies of everything on Encom's computers - all of them, from mainframe to laptops - were stored. Inside the room were row upon row of shelving units with different sizes of steel containers holding the different media that the back-ups were stored on (mostly magnetic tapes of various formats and sizes). It was overseen by a programmer with one of the highest security clearances in the company, and with orders to restrict access only to those with an equally high clearance. After all, not just anybody should have access to basically all past company information.

Roy approached the bullet-proof glass window beside the room's gated doorway, and pressed the intercom button.

"Karen, it's Roy Kleinberg. I need some help, please." A moment later, a perky bottle-blonde woman in an electric wheelchair appeared at the end of a row about one hundred yards away, and moved smoothly to the window.

"Hi, Roy!" She said, too glad to see him. Roy sighed inwardly. They usually arrived at Encom about the same time each day, and rode the elevator up together. She'd been trying to get a date with him for weeks.

The last time he'd refused her, the day before (or was it this morning?) he'd barely avoided a discrimination lawsuit by assuring her that he wasn't refusing her because she was a "crip" in a wheelchair. He'd instead told her that it was because she was a redhead. Now, he noted with dismay, she was a blonde. He knew he would probably have to tell her the truth sooner or later, but was trying to avoid it, because he knew it would get around. Now, however, he really didn't have the time to deal with her. Time moved too fast inside the Grid.

"Karen," He said briskly, all business, "I need to know what date is the oldest mainframe back-up you have."

"The oldest?" She repeated, puzzled. "Um, ok, let me see." And she moved to her computer to call up the inventory. It took a few minutes because she didn't have a specific date to go by, but simply called up all mainframe back-ups and moved to the bottom of the list. It was a very long list. "Ok, well, I have a couple from nineteen seventy-nine." She finally told him. "But I can't guarantee they're even still readable."

"Go a little forward. Do you have anything from nineteen eighty-two? Specifically, the beginning of July?" Roy asked. Karen searched further up the list.

"I have one for July second, and one for July tenth." She told him.

"Give me the one for July tenth." He said.

"Ok." She said doubtfully - these might be bad, too, they both knew. Even under the best of conditions, nearly thirty years is a long time for any computer media.

Karen looked closer at her screen, committing to memory the location of the shelving unit and niche that the media was stored in, manipulated the controls to reverse her wheelchair away from her computer, and sped off.

She returned just a few minutes later with a small, steel box covered with a thick layer of dust.

"Well, obviously _this_ hasn't seen the light of day in thirty years." She said wryly. She wiped off the dust, and put it on the desk. She moved back to her computer in order to look up the combination for the lock on the box. Finding it took a few minutes, during which she kept giving Roy sly looks. Roy ignored her, trying to project an air of professionalism. Finally, Karen found the information she was looking for, turned back to the box, and, shielding one hand with the other, she moved the dial in the necessary sequence. She opened the box, and withdrew a small stack of magnetic tape cassettes a little larger than a standard audio cassette. The rubber band that had held the stack together had long since broken and lay at the bottom of the box. "Do you have a drive that'll read this?" She asked, examining the old cassettes with curiosity. Roy frowned. He hadn't thought of that.

"No. Any ideas where I might even find one?"

"I don't think we have anything that old around." She shrugged doubtfully. "Try Supply, I guess. Even if they don't have one, they might be able to tell you if there's one laying around anywhere."

"Ok. Thanks." Roy sighed. Karen managed to touch his hand as she handed him the clipboard to sign the old tapes out. He ignored it as he signed his name and held out his hand for the tapes. Her fingers lingered in his palm just a moment too long as she placed the stack of tapes in his hand, but he simply thanked her again and took the tapes back to his office. There, he placed them carefully in his desk and locked the drawer before rooting around for another screen and keyboard that he could hook into the laptop to help Alan work on the virus in the Sea of Simulation program.

"How're you doing?" Roy asked Alan as he entered the room. Alan sighed.

"Slowly." He told Roy. "I've located the Sea of Simulation program, but it's going to take time to go through the whole thing looking for Clu's virus." Roy held up the items he'd brought.

"And that's why I brought these - to help look for it."

Quorra, still sitting in the chair next to the desk, stood to make way for Roy to plug the equipment into the laptop's docking port. As she watched, Quorra finally asked the question uppermost in her mind.

"User Alan, how will you tell Flynn's original code from Clu's virus? Clu was in many ways a digital copy of Flynn."

"Well, _digital_ is actually the key. You see, every programmer has their own style, like an author. Kevin was one of the best - if not _the_ best - programmer I ever saw, but he used to use some - flamboyant for lack of a better word - choices in his code. Not inefficient, mind you, just...not as logical as he could have been. And he sometimes showed his sense of humor in some text strings he'd put in for anybody who bothered to read the code."

By now, Roy had hooked up the additional screen and keyboard, and was pulling up a second copy of the file so he could scan the code, too.

"What text strings?" Quorra asked, fascinated at hearing about this facet of her mentor. Alan chuckled.

"Well, in several programs he wrote just after he married Jordan Canas - Sam's mother - he put things like "Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, Jordan Loves Me, Too Bad for You." Quorra screwed up her face at that.

"Even I can tell what bad poetry that is." Alan laughed outright.

"The point is," Roy continued Alan's explanation of the difference between Kevin's code and Clu's, "Kevin was a little flashy in his coding, while Clu, because he was a program, would by necessity be more coldly logical." Alan nodded agreement.

"And, I had a chance to see some of Clu's coding in Tron, so I can recognize it when I see it."

"Oh. Ok, I see." Quorra said. She fell silent, then, in order to let Roy and Alan do their work.

Alan had the first half of the program, Roy took the second, and together they quickly skimmed the program, looking for Clu's work or anything out of place. It took three hours to find it all, and another three to improvise and implement a program to remove it. Then they rebooted the program.

"There." Roy told Quorra with satisfaction. "That should do it. The Sea of Simulation should be clear of the virus, now." Quorra grinned widely and clapped her hands like a child.

"Thank you so much, Users."

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><p>AN 2: By the way, because neither the book nor the movie "Tron" had specific dates, I used the movie's release date for Roy's search (or, actually, the day after, since I believe most daily back-ups are done at night and probably after midnight).

Also, I didn't go into any detail about finding or fixing the virus because, frankly, I didn't want to take that much time to do the research, or bore those uninterested in such things with a lot of very technical computerese.


	12. Chapter 12

A/N: Ok, here's the last chapter besides the Epilogue, although I do have an idea for a sequel of sorts. It will be a cross-over with the recent Marvel movies, specifically Ironman. I'm not sure when (or even if, considering my attention-span) it will get written, but the Tron cross-over section contains the category "Marvel", so check for it there. If I don't start it within the next week, I probably won't start it at all.

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><p>There was no way they were going to tackle a job as big and complex as this without some sleep. So Alan called Lora to let her know he was staying at Encom (although he didn't tell her why - yet - because he didn't want to get her hopes up), and then he and Roy crashed for a couple of hours on the couches in their respective offices.<p>

On the Grid, Tron had given the information that Alan had given to him to a search program called Buth, who interfaced with a recovery program called Knopp. He and Sam had then gone back to Tron's apartment, where Sam had crashed (or, at least, gotten some downtime) on the couch that Alan had spent so long on while rewriting Tron's code.

Quorra had gone back to Sam's apartment to see to Marv, and to get some sleep herself.

Just over four hours after Roy and Alan had cleared the Sea of Simulation of Clu's virus, the four men stood on the shores of the Sea of Simulation surrounded by a dozen small containers of code. Buth and Knopp were dollying the last container to the shoreline.

"Ok, so how are we going to do this?" Sam asked for the fourth (or was it the tenth?) time. Alan sighed at his impatience - although he could certainly understand it - and was finally ready to give at least a partial answer.

"Well, we have what is, as far as we can tell, all of your father's code. We're pretty sure we managed to exclude any of Clu's simply because we excluded him in the search parameters. Now, it would probably take forever to put all the code in the right order, so we're going to do something drastic here. Something you probably _won't_ believe simply because you _don't_ believe. Fortunately, Roy and I do."

"Wait, what?" Sam said, thoroughly confused.

"Well, first we're going to dump all the code in the Sea of Simulation." Alan explained. "Then we're going to go in with it, and literally put it all together using our faith and belief. Or, at least, our User powers."

Sam raised both eyebrows. "We're gonna do what?" He said disbelievingly. Alan smiled fondly, tolerantly, at the younger man.

"Sam, Roy and I always kept the faith that Kevin was still alive and out there somewhere. After even _you_ gave up, we never did. And now we are going to use that faith to bring him back." Alan told Sam, with the rock-solid faith of his convictions. The same faith that had never wavered that Kevin was out there somewhere, and was why he had financed the Flynn Lives Organization. The same conviction that had finally convinced Sam to go to the arcade and start this whole thing in the first place.

"And, of course, we'll also be using your disk to help reconstruct the code." Roy put in. "I wish we could get ahold of Kevin's disk, but since those things don't get digitized into the Outer World, who knows what the computer did with it." He shrugged. "The point is, we don't have it, so your disk it is."

Sam sighed in skeptical acquiescence, grabbed the first container of code, and dumped it into the water. Interestingly, it didn't scatter or sink, but simply floated nearby in a clump. "Huh." Sam made an interested noise, and went for the next container.

The three Users and three programs - Buth and Knopp stayed to help mostly because they were interested in the results, too - upended the boxes into the water. Then the three Users went into the water and stood, in a rough triangle surrounding the loose clumps of floating code.

Alan, going completely on instinct because things worked so differently here and he had so little experience to go on, and hoping this worked, instructed,

"Sam, take off your disk and put it in the water. Roy, I want all three of us to touch Sam's disk, and visualize Kevin as Sam described him - older, hair longer and grayed, with a beard and wearing robes. Visualize as strongly as possible. Like when you wrote the code for the End of Line club or when you saw what you needed to do to write the new Power Control Module." Roy nodded as Sam, shaking his head in disbelief, took off his disk and laid it on the water amidst the code that was once his father. Roy and Alan both put their hands on it, and Sam logged in and called up his own genetic code. The hologram floated just above the water.

All three men closed their eyes, and visualized Kevin Flynn.

Alan saw the carefree programmer he'd once known, whose infectious smile had once made him so jealous because it had brought a smile to Lora's face, lighting her whole being. After Lora had married Alan, and Kevin had married Jordan, that jealousy had slowly faded, leaving only the friendship that had lasted a lifetime - or, in Kevin's case, even more. Slowly, Alan's perception of Kevin changed as Alan added years and the burden of loss to the man in his mind's eye. Once he had that image, he held to it with his friendship and his sheer faith, strengthened by the knowledge that he had been right all along.

Sam saw, in his mind's eye, his father, once enthusiastic, then bowed by the loss of his beloved wife, Sam's mother, and finally, as Sam had last seen him, standing on the bridge near the portal, aged but not weakened, hope renewed by the knowledge that he could defeat Clu for the sake of his son and the ISO he had protected for so long. Sam realized for the first time that now, he had hope, too, and held to that for the sake of the father he might yet return the favor for, and save him in return.

Roy, in the privacy of his own mind and heart, set free the love and devotion he held for Kevin. For so long he had also held faith for the sake of love, but a different love than the ones Alan and Sam held; for the one was the love of a friend, for the other was the love of a son for his father. For Roy, however, the love was unrequited and held close in a secret place in his heart, but no less strong for all that. Roy deliberately ignored the memory of the accusation Kevin had made shortly after Jordan's death that led to Kevin cutting off their friendship, the only relationship Roy knew he could ever have with Kevin. But Roy had forgiven him, knowing that Kevin was only lashing out in his grief and loss. Kevin had never exactly apologized, but he had not kept Roy at such a distance in the months before his disappearance. And Roy held to the hope that, after they brought Kevin back, they might still be friends again. That had been enough for Roy then. It would be again. And so, Roy visualized the older Kevin intermingled with the younger Kevin of the easy smile and vibrant life that he had fallen in love with so long ago. And he held that visualization in his mind and in his heart.

Tron stood watching on shore as the water slowly moved; a simple ripple at first, intensifying to a bubbling roil, then to a frothy churning as Kevin's code moved and rearranged itself in the miraculous Simulation program that had once birthed the ISO's.

The churning increased, gaining height, like an artesian spring whose pressure was great enough to geyser into the air to the height of a man. After a few moments, the churning became less intense and not so tall. It continued to lose height and intensity, slowly calming back to rolling boil, then to ripples that smoothed out once again. In their place was left, not three men standing in the water, but four. The fourth man's hair was grayed with age, his robes, limned with light, floating on the water so that he looked like Poseidon, God of the Sea. And, in a way, he was exactly that, for the fourth man was Kevin Flynn, God of the Grid.

Kevin Flynn opened his eyes. The last thing he remembered was standing on the bridge in front of the portal, watching as Clu was drawn back to him, watching his now-grown son Sam and Quorra, the last ISO, standing in the light of the portal.

He looked around him now. He was in the Sea of Simulation, not far from shore. Sam stood before him. Had his last sacrifice failed? Had Sam been trapped here after all? Kevin started to sag in defeat, but then another hand touched his shoulder from behind. He turned, to find a white-haired man standing behind him, tears running freely down his face, but grinning widely. It took a moment, but then he finally recognized,

"Alan?" He breathed. He didn't understand. "What are you doing here? What's going on?"

"Clu is gone." Alan explained as briefly as he could. "You succeeded, but then Sam brought me and Roy Kleinberg here, we found and reassembled your code, and...and...here you are..." Finally, his voice broke, and Alan's hand on Kevin's shoulder tightened, and then brought him into a heartfelt and so-long-delayed hug. Finally, Kevin broke the hug and turned to Sam, hugged his son hard, then turned to the third man, who stood uncertainly nearby. Roy knew Kevin might still not want his friendship, sullied as it was by his perversion, and so tried to keep a bit of mental as well as physical distance.

But Kevin was having none of it. A thousand cycles is a long time to contemplate one's mistakes and regrets.

"I'm sorry." He told Roy. "I'm so very sorry. Can you forgive me?" Roy tried to maintain his composure, but failed utterly, and tears rolled down his cheeks, tears of pain at the wasted years as well as happiness.

"I forgave you a long time ago." Roy's voice broke, as Kevin pulled him into his arms, hugging the other man as he wept.

On the shore of the Sea of Simulation, three programs dropped to their knees, two in awe, one in happiness, watching the four Users' reunion, as the light from the portal shined on them all.

* * *

><p>Ok, the epilogue will answer the remaining couple of questions (especially about Roy). And then I'm done! Whew!<p>

One last note: Although I have no objections to slash, this story, and any sequels I write, will have NO, I repeat NO slash! Even if I do write a slash version, I will post it separately with proper ratings & warnings, but don't hold your breath.


	13. Epilogue

A/N: Ok, gang, here it is! The last chapter of this story - the epilogue. I hope I answered all questions, and left no plot holes (did I mention I hate plot holes?), so if I did miss something, please let me know so I can fix it! Also, I'd like to apologize, since this story almost more stops than ends, but I have another story going that leads off from this and is a cross-over, so this is where this one ends.

I want to thank everyone who kept with it, and, especially, everyone who reviewed. I hope you all had fun!

The sequel, which I have started, is called "Strange New World", and is in the Tron cross-over section under "Ironman".

* * *

><p>Three Days Later<p>

Roy had ended up building a tape drive that would both read the back-up tapes and would plug into his laptop. Then it took him hours of going through the badly corrupted tapes to find what he was looking for, inside the lightcycle program. He carefully extracted the program and copied it to his laptop before returning the old tapes to Karen in Archives. Then he set about upgrading and modifying the program for use in the Grid. He thought about changing it's name to reflect it's new functionality, but ultimately decided against it; after all, he'd kept it's memory files intact, and didn't want to confuse the poor thing. Bad enough it - he - had been stored for so long...

He finally finished the modifications and saved the program to a floppy disk he'd dug up, using an external drive he'd also dug up.

He found Alan in the room they'd taken to calling The Grid Room, communicating with Kevin, who had elected to remain in the Grid for a few days so he could do some necessary repair work - the Power Control Module wasn't the only program in need of rewriting or replacement - and until they could come up with an explanation as to where Kevin had been all this time. The current working story was that he had been kidnapped by terrorists. There were, however, a lot of details to work out.

And a lot of guilt from Kevin and bad feelings from the programs to work out, as well.

"How's Kevin?" Roy asked as Alan logged off.

"Doing ok." Alan replied. "Anxious to come back, although he knows there's going to be one hell of an adjustment period ahead of him. For everybody." And then, finally, Alan asked the questions that he was dying to ask.

"How did you know what Tron was going through? And what was the argument between you and Kevin about all those years ago, anyway?" Alan asked, not unkindly, knowing there was probably a lot of pain on Roy's part. Roy sighed. He'd been expecting this, and hadn't really been sure what he was going to say. After all, Alan had bought him back to Encom to be the "moral compass', and yet, there were those who would say that now, he was the most _im_moral person in the company. What would Alan say? However, he finally decided to tell Alan the truth. After all, Alan was his friend, and Kevin had apologized and...times had changed. He sat down in the chair beside the desk, and began.

"Sherman, set the wayback machine." He said in his best Peabody impersonation. "To nineteen seventy-five. I was nineteen years old, and...and...gay." He blurted it out, then glanced apprehensively at Alan, but the other man didn't look disgusted or angry. Just sympathetic. Roy breathed a sigh of relief. So long! He'd kept the secret so long! It was so strange to finally tell someone, that he didn't know what to feel, so he just continued, "Getting beaten up - for lesbians to be raped - was common, and we couldn't report it to the police, because half the time, the police _were_ the perpetrators. That year, I returned to college, and caught up with some friends I hung out with in secret who were also gay. But someone was missing. A lesbian who had been studying engineering who wouldn't just give that up, so we knew something was wrong. We called her parents, who refused to talk to us. We finally found out she'd been forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital where they did conversion therapy, sometimes called Gay Reparative Therapy. Back then it usually meant aversion therapy using nausea-inducing drugs and electroshock treatments. Even back then, some people considered it torture, but parents didn't care. They'd do whatever it took to make their kids straight, whether they liked it or not." He finished bitterly.

"God! That's horrible." Alan murmured, genuinely sickened. _'How could a parent do something like that to their own child?'_.

"Anyway, we decided to rescue her. We got ahold of the schematics of the building, and one night we broke in. I hacked the security system, and then the computer system and found out what room she was in. We picked the lock and got her out. One of the guys knew somebody who forged documents, and we got her a new identity in another state. Over the course of the next couple of years, we rescued a bunch of people from hospitals within a reasonable distance. I was the one who hacked the systems, but I did my fair share of fighting, too, if security caught us."

"Huh. Good for you!" Alan said admiringly. "So that's how you learned to hack into Encom to get the evidence for the Flynn Lives Organization." Roy nodded.

"I've been the hacker known as ZackAttack since long before the FLO." Roy told him. "But, aside from the FLO, I haven't hacked anything for...a long time."

"And Kevin knew you were in love with him?" Alan guessed.

"Yeah. Somehow I slipped up, and he realized...how I felt about him." Roy stared for a moment at his hands, but did not see them. Instead, he was seeing again the confrontation that effectively ended their friendship. "Not long after Jordan's death, I went over to his house to check up on him. He...he accused me of using Jordan's death to get...close...to him. He said, "You're glad Jordan's gone because now you think you have a chance." He thought I was trying to take advantage of him in his grief." Roy looked up, eyes bright with unshed tears. "I would _never_ do that. I love him too much to hurt him like that." Roy explained, needing Alan to understand. "I knew Kevin was straight, and that there could never be anything but friendship, and that was enough for me. But I loved him enough to be concerned and to hurt for him, and I just wanted to help. I never blamed him because I knew it was the pain and grief talking, but I stayed away, after that."

"But that's why you were so devoted to the FLO for so long. Your faith and love kept you going." Alan said.

"So did yours. You just love him in a different way than I do." Roy shrugged.

"True." Alan acknowledged. Roy closed his eyes, and let out a long sigh of relief.

"Feels good to finally come clean to you." Roy told Alan. "I wanted to tell you for a long time, because you're my friend, and I didn't want to keep it a secret, but I was afraid. Heck, back then, before anti-discrimination laws, you could be fired for being gay. And in the eighties, with the fear of HIV - or AIDS, it was called then - it was even worse." Alan laid a sympathetic hand on Roy's shoulder and squeezed.

"Well, times have changed. Society's changed." Alan told him reassuringly. "There's still hatred, and bigotry, but you don't have to keep it a secret anymore. Not here, anyway. And not from your real friends."

"Yeah, I realize that." Roy said with a small smile. "In fact, there's this woman who's been trying to get a date with me, and I'm running out of excuses."

"The one in the wheelchair who chases you out of the elevator every morning?" Alan teased. Roy chuckled.

"Yeah, her. I think I actually might enjoy telling her." He said.

"Hey, go for it." Alan told him. "Just let me be there to see her reaction."

"Deal!" Roy laughed.

"Now," Alan said briskly. "Why'd you really come down to the Black Hole of Calcutta?"

"Oh, yeah." Roy had nearly forgotten the floppy disk in his hand. "You remember Ram?" Alan thought a moment.

"Yeah."

"Well, turns out, Ram is an actuarial program I wrote about a million years ago. This particular copy had been kidnapped by the MCP and forced to fight in the games. He and Tron got to be good friends."

"Oh, I remember that part of Kevin's stories." Alan said. "Ram was derezzed trying to help Tron and Kevin fight the MCP."

"Right. And I was talking to Tron. The guy still misses Ram, even after all this time. So, I found back-up tapes from the night Kevin got zapped into the system"

"And they were still readable?" Alan said, eyebrows raised.

"Barely." Roy told him. "Anyway, I found Ram, upgraded him to run in this Grid," he gestured at the laptop sitting on the desk, "and modified him as an anti-virus program per Sam's question about one that would run on this system. I kept his original functionality because the math part of his program is apparently useful for other stuff than calculating lifespans, according to Tron. Apparently, Ram was surprisingly good in the games." Alan chuckled at that, and surrendered his chair. Roy moved to the laptop, inserted the disk, and installed the program. "Here you go, buddy." Roy said to the computer, but Alan knew he was really talking to Ram. "Hope you can help Tron." Alan knew he meant more than just helping keep the Grid safe.

Tron, notified by Roy Two to expect an anti-virus program for assistance, stood by the Sea of Simulation as the new program emerged. His eyes widened and his jaw dropped when he saw who it was, although, as he got closer, Tron could see changes in the program he knew. This program had curly blond hair and was wearing black armor with pale blue circuitry. He also looked more like the way Roy Two looked - older, the Users called it.

"Tron?" Ram said, finally recognizing the older-looking program. Then he looked around in confusion. "What's going on?" Tron grinned widely, draped an arm over Ram's shoulders, and steered him toward his lightrunner, parked nearby.

"That's a very long story, old friend. You've been stored a very long time." And, chatting happily, Tron drove towards the glittering City.

The End

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><p>By the way, yeah, the kinds of abuse that Roy described against gays back in the '70's and '80's - including "gay reperative therapy" really did happen. Thank goodness things are better today, although there's still a lot of room for improvement!<p> 


End file.
